incorporate Negin's suggestions about TIFF

Author: TomNicholas

intermediate/storage_formats.ipynb

@@ -188,6 +188,45 @@
     "## TIFF"
    ]
   },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is a *flexible* raster container widely used in biosciences, remote sensing and GIS. \n",
+    "\n",
+    "A **GeoTIFF** is simply a TIFF that stores additional additional georeferencing information tags (CRS, affine transform, etc.) so geospatial software knows where each pixel sits on Earth. \n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Images (“IFDs”)** – each “page” in a TIFF holds a 2-D array of pixels.  \n",
+    "\n",
+    "  Multi-band rasters (e.g. RGB, multi-spectral) appear as *separate* IFDs or as extra samples within one IFD.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Tags** – key–value metadata pairs (datatype, compression, nodata value, CRS, resolution, etc.).  \n",
+    "  \n",
+    "  GeoTIFF adds standardised tags like ModelPixelScaleTag, ModelTiepointTag, GeoKeyDirectoryTag.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Compression / tiling** – DEFLATE, LZW, etc. Tiling lets software fetch small windows efficiently.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "### Practical notes for xarray users\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Read** – use `rioxarray.open_rasterio()` (wraps rasterio) to get an immediate, Dask-chunked DataArray.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Write** – `DataArray.rio.to_raster(\"out.tif\")`; choose compression + tiling via driver_kwargs.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Dimensionality** – TIFF is inherently 2-D per band; no native time or vertical axis. If you need 4-D data, NetCDF or Zarr is usually a better fit.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Metadata depth** – single-level tags only (no nested groups). For rich hierarchies, stick to HDF5 / NetCDF-4.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* **Cloud-optimized GeoTIFF (COG)** – same format, arranged so HTTP range requests can stream windows efficiently; xarray handles it transparently when rasterio is compiled with libcurl.\n"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "### How does TIFF relate to xarray?\n",
+    "\n"
+   ]
+  },
   {
    "cell_type": "markdown",
    "metadata": {},